I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

Shock Poll: Meteorologists Are Global Warming Skeptics

A recent survey of American Meteorological Society members shows meteorologists are skeptical that humans are causing a global warming crisis. The survey confirms what many scientists have been reporting for years; the politically focused bureaucratic leadership of many science organizations is severely out of touch with the scientists themselves regarding global warming issues.

According to American Meteorological Society (AMS) data, 89% of AMS meteorologists believe global warming is happening, but only a minority (30%) is very worried about global warming.

This sharp contrast between the large majority of meteorologists who believe global warming is happening and the modest minority who are nevertheless very worried about it is consistent with other scientist surveys. This contrast exposes global warming alarmists who assert that 97% of the world’s scientists agree humans are causing a global warming crisis simply because these scientists believe global warming is occurring. However, as this and other scientist surveys show, believing that some warming is occurring is not the same as believing humans are causing a worrisome crisis.

Other questions solidified the meteorologists’ skepticism about humans creating a global warming crisis. For example, among those meteorologists who believe global warming is happening, only a modest majority (59%) believe humans are the primary cause. More importantly, only 38% of respondents who believe global warming is occurring say it will be very harmful during the next 100 years.

With substantially fewer than half of meteorologists very worried about global warming or expecting substantial harm during the next 100 years, one has to wonder why environmental activist groups are sowing the seeds of global warming panic. Does anyone really expect our economy to be powered 100 years from now by the same energy sources we use today? Why immediately, severely, and permanently punish our economy with costly global warming restrictions when technological advances and the free market will likely address any such global warming concerns much more efficiently, economically and effectively?

In another line of survey questions, 53% of respondents believe there is conflict among AMS members regarding the topic of global warming. Only 33% believe there is no conflict. Another 15% were not sure. These results provide strong refutation to the assertion that “the debate is over.”

Interestingly, only 26% of respondents said the conflict among AMS members is unproductive.

Overall, the survey of AMS scientists paints a very different picture than the official AMS Information Statement on Climate Change. Drafted by the AMS bureaucracy, the Information Statement leaves readers with the impression that AMS meteorologists have few doubts about humans creating a global warming crisis. The Information Statement indicates quite strongly that humans are the primary driver of global temperatures and the consequences are and will continue to be quite severe. Compare the bureaucracy’s Information Statement with the survey results of the AMS scientists themselves.

Scientists who have attended the Heartland Institute’s annual International Conference on Climate Change report the same disconnect throughout their various science organizations; only a minority of scientists believes humans are causing a global warming crisis, yet the non-scientist bureaucracies publish position statements that contradict what the scientists themselves believe. Few, if any, of these organizations actually poll their members before publishing a position statement. Within this context of few actual scientist surveys, the AMS survey results are very powerful.

In contrast to the AMS survey, where all respondents are AMS meteorologists, a majority have Ph.D.s and fully 80% have a Ph.D. or Masters Degree, position statements by organizational bureaucracies carry little scientific weight. For example, a position statement recently published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and frequently cited as the “definitive” indication of scientific consensus on global warming was authored by a mere 23 persons. Of those 23 persons, only five had Ph.D.s in a field closely related to climate science, an equal number (5) were staffers for environmental activist groups, two were politicians, one was the EPA general counsel under the Clinton administration and 19 of the 23 had already spoken out on behalf of global warming alarmism prior to being chosen for the panel. Clearly the scientific weight of the NAS statement pales in comparison to the AMS meteorologist survey.

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Having glanced over the survey, I have to say your assertions about being sceptic do not match the survey results. Yes, they ought to be sceptical. That is how I was taught science, and the lack of any ability to predict the climate, the lack of extreme weather events, etc. etc. ought to make anyone sceptical, particularly well educated scientists.

But this is not what the survey is brining out.

I am particularly concerned with the assertion that warming will be harmful. This seems to fly in the face of the obvious benefits of warming … e.g. humans inhabit every climate zone from the equator to … well not the pole.

It ought to be obvious to anyone with an open mind, that what limits where we can live is not heat, but cold (and dry).

OK, deserts are thought of as warm, but the biggest deserts on planet earth are the Arctic and Antarctic which are deserted of life because that life is stifled by snow cover.

Moreover history shows that e.g. in the warmer bronze age, far more of Britain was inhabited than now. The evidence that warming is beneficial is all around for those willing to open their minds and look.

Lenzie moss. Comparisons with temperatures in the past when the human population was very very much lower are risky. We now need agriculture around the world to be humming away pretty reliably in order to feed 7 billion people. It isn’t a question of whether some parts of the world did better under mildly warmer conditions. Not all did. The increase in dry conditions in the Fertile Crescent for example was an important part of the decline of civilisations there.

But with AGW we are looking at temperature increases much higher than periods like the bronze age and disruption to agriculture around the world. Warming may well be beneficial in some areas. But things like disruptions to the West African and South Asian (and perhaps East Asian) Monsoons which are one of the predicted effects of AGW most certainly wont be beneficial to over 3 billion people.

I hate to burst your bubble, but those IPCC “predictions” of doom and gloom are based on untested climate models. They are nothing more than wild guesses.

Even IPCC scientist Jagadish Shukla admitted:

… It is inconceivable that policymakers will be willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.

Latest scientific papers:

From Huard 2011:

“under constant external forcing, TAR and AR4 simulations have no predictive skill whatsoever on the chronology of events beyond the annual cycle. A climate projection is thus not a prediction of climate, it is an experiment probing the model’s response to change in GHG concentrations.”

From D. Koutsoyiannis et al. 2011

Specifically, we show that, climate models are not only unable to predict the variability of climate, but they are also unable to reproduce even the means of temperature and rainfall in the past.

I could cite numerous other scientific studies that indicate the IPCC models are not credible.

And so far the model “predictions” for the first decade of the 21st century are flat wrong.

The one who needs to take a deep breath is you, actrually, try stopping and thinking before typing ;)

This applies to you “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

So I have no doubt that you will capitulate, no matyter how compellign the evidenc eis against you.

Interesting thing about lawyers like you, they always have to provide some sort of answer, even if it means ahving to argue a strawman, and to at all costs cede nothing. It should be obvious to you by now james that not one of the people commenting here have bought into your attempt to spin the results. You need to find a new game.

You say ” Forgetting for a moment that you have not identified any particular lies, why do you so deeply fear open discussion and debate?”

LOL, actually my first post did identfy a lie by you. I tend to not debate liars, but so far you are losing this debate handsomely. Your lie is in the very title: “ …meteorologists are AGW skeptics”, that is not what the survey concluded. I say it is a lie, because you supposedly read the survey and know better, yet chose to misrepresent the facts. So you lied about what the survey said, or you lied when you created the impresison that you read the survey when you did not.

But please do continue commenting, because each and every time you do so, you just dig yourself deeper into a hole and reveal your bias and agenda. But I do understand that your generous income from Heartland requires you to continue fabricate doubt and uncertainty at all costs ;)

I am still waiting for you to identify a particular lie to back up your assertion. Typing multiple paragraphs of irrelevant and childish insults doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t backed up your assertion.

You seem to have issues with comprehension. As I have already pointed out to you, the very title to your diatribe is a lie.

Or are you now trying feigning ignorance?

It is time for Joes Bast from Heartland to pull the plug on you. You should do what you fellow contrarian Pat Michaels does and stay out of the comments. Cowardly on his part, but smart, because that way he avoids embarrassing himself as you are doing now.

You can try and dismiss scathing critique as “irrelevant and childish insults”, but doing so only underscores your attempt to redirect attention away from your failings :)

Yes, Albatross, I am sure climate science professor Patrick Michaels fears a scientific discussion with anonymous trolls. Perhaps if you would present scientific facts/arguments in an adult manner he would be happy to educate you in the comments section. Heck, you could consider it a free education without paying college tuition.

Although I, like Dr. Michaels, usually have more pressing matters on my plate, I have to admit that it is amusing to now and then rattle the cages of you Rubrecht the Monkey Boy imitators (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX3ePAOUK7U).